On a Saturday afternoon the KRB played at a Mexican restaurant for family and friends of a loved one who recently passed away. After the funeral today they had a life celebration at El Tropical Mexico in Pomona. It's a delightful place that I'm going to revisit so that I can sample their chile rellenos, my favorite.
From the Google street view I hadn't noticed that they had a fairly large banquet room behind the original restaurant.
I set up my PA and my small rig. I mostly played my Fender Jazz Bass Special with flats since we were doing mostly vintage and classic country by request of the family. They had given us a huge list of songs that were the favorite of their Grandpa.
It was a lovely room but with lots of hard surfaces, tile, glass, etc.
You can see the baffles hanging from the ceiling. When the room was full of people we didn't have any trouble with sound reflection.
I think Jeff is pretending to be a great matador.
We were in a very tight space, in between those columns along the wall. Jeff was a little cramped.
Here we are at sound check. Kelly Rae couldn't make it today due to a previous commitment so our friend Kellye Huff joined us and did a great job. We all had to pick up a few extra tunes that we don't normally do but we pulled them off just fine. It's only country music, right?
There was a terrific Mexican buffet and I could see beer and margaritas going all around the room.
The buffet line went all around the room.
There was a slide show going on the big screen TVs in the room, lots of old pictures and recent pictures of the dearly departed and family. That young man you see holding the baby is Adam, our host. He's a really nice fellow who was very appreciative and very complimentary. I told him how honored we were to take part in their celebration.
Here we are at the bar just about to go on. We played one long 2 hour set so that we could get in as many requests as we could.
When we got the special request, Daniel brought down the house with his rendition of "Devil Went Down To Georgia".
The lovely Ms. Kellye had folks singing along with her. People just love her. Jeff is enjoying himself despite the narrow accomodations.
This is Adam's sister, Stephanie. We were able to play a special request for her too. They loved the old Alan Jackson songs.
We even had dancers. "Kansas City" was a huge hit with this crowd, and the favorite song of the dearly departed.
I was singing "Here In The Real World" and happened to glance over at Adam. I saw tears in his eyes. That song must've meant something special. I started getting a little choked up too. I had to take a breath and look away. There was a lot of emotion in the room but most of it was joy and merriment.
When we played another special request, "Friends In Low Places", everyone raised their glass. It was a nice celebration.
The two hours went by very quickly. Soon I was loading my gear and heading for home.
This was one of the closest gigs I've played with this band, just a 15 minute drive. I usually have to drive to the OC or to Palm Springs. That was good because I had to play in church at 7am the next morning and still have to go over some tunes. I look forward to playing in church. I get to use my powers for good.
Until next time, thanks for looking!
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
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